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Arecaceae

The Arecaceae (/ærəˈksi/) is a family of perennial, flowering plants in the monocot order Arecales. Their growth form can be climbers, shrubs, tree-like and stemless plants, all commonly known as palms. Those having a tree-like form are called palm trees.[3] Currently, 181 genera with around 2,600 species are known,[4][5] most of which are restricted to tropical and subtropical climates. Most palms are distinguished by their large, compound, evergreen leaves, known as fronds, arranged at the top of an unbranched stem, except for the Hyphaene genus, who has branched palms. However, palms exhibit an enormous diversity in physical characteristics and inhabit nearly every type of habitat within their range, from rainforests to deserts.

Not to be confused with the heather family Ericaceae, the arum family Araceae or the ivy family Araliaceae.

Palms are among the best known and most extensively cultivated plant families. They have been important to humans throughout much of history, especially in regions like the Middle East and North Africa. A wide range of common products and foods are derived from palms. In contemporary times, palms are also widely used in landscaping. In many historical cultures, because of their importance as food, palms were symbols for such ideas as victory, peace, and fertility.

Etymology[edit]

The word Arecaceae is derived from the word areca with the suffix "-aceae". Areca is derived from Portuguese, via Malayalam അടയ്ക്ക (aṭaykka), which is from Dravidian *aṭ-ay-kkāy ("areca nut"). The suffix -aceae is the feminine plural of the Latin -āceus ("resembling").


Palm originates from Latin palma semantically overlapping with sense of "hand front" (due to similar splayed shape) ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥hmeh₂, a direct descendant folm once existed in Old English.[6]

Subfamily are the largest subfamily with 14 tribes and containing over 100 genera. All tribes have pinnate or bipinnate leaves and flowers arranged in groups of three, with a central pistillate and two staminate flowers.

Arecoideae

Subfamily includes the climbing palms, such as rattans. The leaves are usually pinnate; derived characters (synapomorphies) include spines on various organs, organs specialized for climbing, an extension of the main stem of the leaf-bearing reflexed spines, and overlapping scales covering the fruit and ovary.

Calamoideae

Subfamily has small to medium-sized flowers, spirally arranged, with a gynoecium of three joined carpels.

Ceroxyloideae

Subfamily are the second-largest subfamily with 8 tribes. Most palms in this subfamily have palmately lobed leaves and solitary flowers with three, or sometimes four carpels. The fruit normally develops from only one carpel.

Coryphoideae

Subfamily contains only one species, Nypa fruticans,[18] which has large, pinnate leaves. The fruit is unusual in that it floats, and the stem is underground and dichotomously branched, also unusual in palms.

Nypoideae

Palms are a monophyletic group of plants, meaning the group consists of a common ancestor and all its descendants.[16] Extensive taxonomic research on palms began with botanist H.E. Moore, who organized palms into 15 major groups based mostly on general morphological characteristics. The following classification, proposed by N.W. Uhl and J. Dransfield in 1987, is a revision of Moore's classification that organizes palms into 6 subfamilies.[17] A few general traits of each subfamily are listed below.


The Phytelephantoideae is the sixth subfamily of Arecaceae in N.W. Uhl and J. Dransfield's 1987 classification. Members of this group have distinct monopodial flower clusters. Other distinct features include a gynoecium with five to 10 joined carpels, and flowers with more than three parts per whorl. Fruits are multiple-seeded and have multiple parts. From the modern phylogenomic data, the Phytelephantoideae are tribe in the Ceroxyloideae subfamily.[19]


Currently, few extensive phylogenetic studies of the Arecaceae exist. In 1997, Baker et al. explored subfamily and tribe relationships using chloroplast DNA from 60 genera from all subfamilies and tribes. The results strongly showed the Calamoideae are monophyletic, and Ceroxyloideae and Coryphoideae are paraphyletic. The relationships of Arecoideae are uncertain, but they are possibly related to the Ceroxyloideae and Phytelephantoideae. Studies have suggested the lack of a fully resolved hypothesis for the relationships within the family is due to a variety of factors, including difficulties in selecting appropriate outgroups, homoplasy in morphological character states, slow rates of molecular evolution important for the use of standard DNA markers, and character polarization.[20] However, hybridization has been observed among Orbignya and Phoenix species, and using chloroplast DNA in cladistic studies may produce inaccurate results due to maternal inheritance of the chloroplast DNA. Chemical and molecular data from non-organelle DNA, for example, could be more effective for studying palm phylogeny.[19]


Recently, nuclear genomes and transcriptomes have been used to reconstruct the phylogeny of palms. This has revealed, for example, that a whole-genome duplication event occurred early in the evolution of the Arecaceae lineage, that was not experienced by its sister clade, the Dasypogonaceae.[21]


For a phylogenetic tree of the family, see the list of Arecaceae genera.

Bangalow palm

Archontophoenix

Betel palm

Areca

Astrocaryum

Attalea

Pupunha

Bactris

Beccariophoenix alfredii

Beccariophoenix

—Bismarck palm

Bismarckia

—Palmyra palm, sugar palm, toddy palm

Borassus

Butia

Rattan palm

Calamus

Ceroxylon

—Coconut

Cocos

Coccothrinax

Carnauba wax palm

Copernicia

—Gebang palm, Buri palm or Talipot palm

Corypha

—Oil palm

Elaeis

—Cabbage heart palm, açaí palm

Euterpe

Doum palm

Hyphaene

—Chilean wine palm, Coquito palm

Jubaea

—Latan palm

Latania

Licuala

—Cabbage palm

Livistona

Moriche palm

Mauritia

Sago palm

Metroxylon

Nipa palm

Nypa

—Bolivian coconut palms

Parajubaea

Date palm

Phoenix

Pritchardia

—Raffia palm

Raphia

Rhapidophyllum

Rhapis

—Royal palm

Roystonea

—Palmettos

Sabal

Salak

Salacca

Queen palm

Syagrus

Thrinax

Windmill palm, Kumaon palm

Trachycarpus

Trithrinax

Manila palm, Joannis palm

Veitchia

—Fan palm

Washingtonia

The type member of Arecaceae is the areca palm (), the fruit of which, the areca nut, is chewed with the betel leaf for intoxicating effects.

Areca catechu

wax is harvested from the leaves of a Brazilian palm (Copernicia).

Carnauba

whose stems are used extensively in furniture and baskets, are in the genus Calamus.

Rattans

is an edible vegetable oil produced by the oil palms in the genus Elaeis.[33]

Palm oil

Several species are harvested for , a vegetable eaten in salads.[34]

heart of palm

Sap of the nipa palm, , is used to make vinegar.

Nypa fruticans

Palm is sometimes fermented to produce palm wine or toddy, an alcoholic beverage common in parts of Africa, India, and the Philippines. The sap may be drunk fresh, but fermentation is rapid, reaching up to 4% alcohol content within an hour, and turning vinegary in a day.[35]

sap

Palmyra and date palm sap is harvested in Bengal, India, to process into gur and .

jaggery

is the partially edible seed of the fruit of the coconut palm (Cocos nucifera).[36]

Coconut

is a coarse, water-resistant fiber extracted from the outer shell of coconuts, used in doormats, brushes, mattresses, and ropes.[37]

Coir

Some indigenous groups living in palm-rich areas use palms to make many of their necessary items and food. , for example, a starch made from the pith of the trunk of the sago palm Metroxylon sagu, is a major staple food for lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Moluccas.

Sago

Palm wine is made from also called Chilean wine palm, or coquito palm.

Jubaea

Recently, the fruit of the açaí palm has been used for its reputed health benefits.

Euterpe

Saw palmetto () is being investigated as a drug for treating enlarged prostates.[38]

Serenoa repens

Palm leaves are also valuable to some peoples as a material for thatching, basketry, clothing, and in religious ceremonies (see "Symbolism" below).

[14]

Ornamental uses: Today, palms are valuable as and are often grown along streets in tropical and subtropical cities. Chamaedorea elegans is a popular houseplant and is grown indoors for its low maintenance. Farther north, palms are a common feature in botanical gardens or as indoor plants. Few palms tolerate severe cold and the majority of the species are tropical or subtropical. The three most cold-tolerant species are Trachycarpus fortunei, native to eastern Asia, and Rhapidophyllum hystrix and Sabal minor, both native to the southeastern United States.

ornamental plants

The southeastern U.S. state of is nicknamed the Palmetto State after the sabal palmetto (cabbage palmetto), logs from which were used to build the fort at Fort Moultrie. During the American Revolutionary War, they were invaluable to those defending the fort, because their spongy wood absorbed or deflected the British cannonballs.[39]

South Carolina

Singaporean politician uses a palm tree-like symbol similar to a Ravenala to represent him in the 2011 Singaporean presidential election.[40] The symbol of a party he founded, Progress Singapore Party, was also based on a palm tree.[41]

Tan Cheng Bock

On , Catholics receive a cross on their forehead made of palm ashes as a reminder of the Catholic belief that everyone and everything eventually returns to where it came from, commonly expressed by the saying "ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”[42]

Ash Wednesday

Human use of palms is at least as old as human civilization itself, starting with the cultivation of the date palm by Mesopotamians and other Middle Eastern peoples 5,000 years or more ago.[24] Date wood, pits for storing dates, and other remains of the date palm have been found in Mesopotamian sites.[25][26] The date palm had a significant effect on the history of the Middle East and North Africa.[27] In the text “Date Palm Products” (1993), W.H. Barreveld wrote:[28]


An indication of the importance of palms in ancient times is that they are mentioned more than 30 times in the Bible,[29] and at least 22 times in the Quran.[30] The Torah also references the “70 date palm trees,” which symbolize the 70 aspects of Torah that are revealed to those who “eat of its fruit.”[31]


Arecaceae have great economic importance, including coconut products, oils, dates, palm syrup, ivory nuts, carnauba wax, rattan cane, raffia, and palm wood. This family supplies a large amount of the human diet and several other human uses, both by absolute amount produced and by number of species domesticated.[32] This is far higher than almost any other plant family, sixth out of domesticated crops in the human diet, and first in total economic value produced – sharing the top spot with the Poaceae and Fabaceae.[32] These human uses have also spread many Arecaceae species around the world.[32]


Along with dates mentioned above, members of the palm family with human uses are numerous:

, the red palm mite[46]

Raoiella indica

, the palm seed beetle or palm seed weevil[47]

Caryobruchus gleditsiae

, the red palm weevil, recently introduced to Europe[48][49]

Rhynchophorus ferrugineus

Some pests are specialists to particular taxa. Pests that attack a variety of species of palms include:

(Ghetto palm), a tree in the flowering plant family Simaroubaceae[51]

Ailanthus altissima

x gageana 'Calidora' (Persian palm), a flowering plant in the family Araceae[52]

Alocasia odora

(Palm aloe), a flowering plant in the family Asphodelaceae[53]

Aloe thraskii

(Snake palm), a flowering plant in the family Araceae[54]

Amorphophallus konjac

(Ponytail palm), a flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae[55]

Beaucarnea recurvata

(Palm leaf begonia), a flowering plant in the family Begoniaceae[56]

Begonia luxurians

(South Pacific palm), a flowering plant in the family Oxalidaceae[57]

Biophytum umbraculum

(Palm fern), a fern in the family Aspleniaceae[58]

Blechnum appendiculatum

'Lacinato kale' (Black Tuscan palm), a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae[59]

Brassica oleracea

(Vulcan palm), a flowering plant in the family Campanulaceae[60]

Brighamia insignis

(Panama hat palm)[61] and perhaps other members in the family Cyclanthaceae.

Carludovica palmata

[61] (Cabbage palm, Torbay palm, ti palm) or palm lily[61] (family Asparagaceae) and other representatives in the genus Cordyline.

Cordyline australis

(Palm fern)[61] and other tree ferns (families Cyatheaceae and Dicksoniaceae) that may be confused with palms.

Cyathea cunninghamii

(Sago palm)[61] and the rest of the order Cycadales.

Cycas revoluta

(Umbrella palm), a sedge in the family Cyperaceae[62]

Cyperus alternifolius

(Grass palm), a flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae[63] and other plants in the genus Dasylirion

Dasylirion longissimum

(Gum palm), a cycad in the family Zamiaceae[64]

Dioon spinulosum

(Dragon palm) a flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae[65]

Dracaena marginata

(Southern sea palm), a species of brown alga in the family Lessoniaceae[66]

Eisenia arborea

(Figleaf palm), a flowering plant in the family Araliaceae[67]

Fatsia japonica

(Palm tree moss or palm moss), a moss in the family Hypnodendraceae[68]

Hypnodendron comosum

species (Banana palm), a flowering plant in the family Musaceae[69]

Musa

(Madagascar palm), a flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae[70][71]

Pachypodium lamerei

(Screw palm), a flowering plant in the family Pandanaceae[61] and perhaps other Pandanus spp.

Pandanus spiralis

(Traveller's palm),[61] a flowering plant in the family Strelitziaceae

Ravenala

(Palm grass),[61] a grass in the family Poaceae

Setaria palmifolia

(Yucca palm or palm tree yucca)[72]

Yucca brevifolia

(Needle palm)[73] and Yucca filifera (St. Peter's palm),[74] flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae

Yucca filamentosa

(Cardboard palm), a cycad in the family Zamiaceae[75]

Zamia furfuracea

(Emerald palm or aroid palm), a flowering plant in the family Araceae[76]

Zamioculcas zamiifolia

Some species commonly called palms, though they are not true palms, include:

Coconut

—genera with palmate leaves

Fan palm

List of Arecaceae genera

List of foliage plant diseases (Arecaceae)

—palms able to withstand colder temperatures

List of hardy palms

—called the "sea palm" (a brown alga)

Postelsia

—A wiki-based site dedicated to high quality images and information on palm trees.

Palmpedia

—A collection of palm images, scientific data, and horticultural information hosted by Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Miami.

Fairchild Guide to Palms

—A list of the currently acknowledged genera by Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London, England (archived 2007)

Kew Botanic Garden's Palm Genera list

—Palm and Cycad Societies of Australia (PACSOA)

Palm species listing with images

which includes pages on Arecaceae taxonomy and a photo index.

Palm & Cycad Societies of Florida, Inc. (PACSOF)

Sterken, Peter (2008). (PDF). Plant Science Bulletin. 54 (4). Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008.

"The Elastic Stability of Palms"